Spamming: Most Preferred Medium for Cyber Attackers

Symantec, the Security Company, has published its report, "The March State of Spam", in the first week of March 2008, noting that spam has become the most preferred medium for unconventional cyber attackers to deceive as quickly and as many unwary Internet users as they can, as reported by Blogger News Network on March 10, 2008.

According to the report, most scammers and spammers are unskilled so, just some amount of awareness can foil their tricks. The report highlights various scams, which are exploiting events like the International Women's Day, the US Presidential election and those showing fake celebrity videos for creating the latest temptations in spam.

The report also reveals that during February 2008, spammers started to distribute fake links claiming to showcase Hillary Clinton delivering a speech but actually, the links masked a sinister Trojan. More recently, spammers have been found leveraging the 2008 presidential elections' last front-runners.

Dermot Harnett, Principal Analyst, Symantec, said that as observed over the recent time, spammers have been looking for popular brands to exploit to draw consumers' attention and currently, the biggest brands are the presidential contenders. Since any of these candidates could actually send a legitimate message, spammers are perched to take advantage of it, as reported by DMNews on March 7, 2008.

In addition, spammers are associating the election candidates with a whole lot of things like porn, Viagra, mobile dew inkle systems and get-rich-quick schemes. Another driving force that initiated spamming activities during February 2008 was of social engineering. In March 2008, while the general volume of spam stabilized at 78.5% of total e-mail and spamming techniques are more or less common, the exploitation of events, public figures and big brands are the month's driving force behind the spam campaigns.

Symantec concludes that the slow down of economic conditions recently has been seen a surge in spam mails encouraging consumers to refinance early with phony promises. While the torrent of finance related spam continues, the sender of these messages are also diversifying their sale operations by adding the sale and purchase of graveyards and burial plots.